


lean in and let it hurt

by dinosaur



Series: infinity times infinity [4]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Body Modification, Hurt/Comfort, Interspecies Relationship(s), Multi, Other, Plants, Relationship Negotiation, Spaceships, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 09:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6001333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinosaur/pseuds/dinosaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not like Zayn thinks they’re better off without the ship, but he does think they’re enough, in and of themselves. The ship, even one as sweet as this one, is just a bonus.</p><p>But Niall isn’t him, doesn’t think that way really.</p><p>Doesn’t think like any of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lean in and let it hurt

**Author's Note:**

> objectively, this probably will not make a lick of sense to anyone who hasn't read [it hurts to become](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3369920), soz, so i would recommend doing that first! this takes place before the last two scenes of ihtb, in the interim.
> 
> i've been a shaky lil sapling w this, so i wanna give a really huge and huggy thanks to my betas and support team on this: arden, husky, gillian, nicole - you guys are the sunlamp in my greenhouse. thank you.  
> title from pluto by sleeping at last.

 

 

It’s always a little silly, because Niall grew up on the stars. Niall grew up weaving in and out of gas clouds like they were toys in a nursery, reaching out a hand to touch comets like they were a mobile floating gently out of reach.

It’s a little silly, because it shouldn’t surprise Zayn, is all.

Niall’s in the arboretum. There’s a tree leaning close around him and the plex stretched to barely a skin between him and the dark of the galaxy they’re moving steadily through. And Zayn’s standing in the doorway, one hand still holding the holo for the aft upgrades plans that suddenly seem astronomically unimportant, in the face of Niall napping right where the universe can see him.

Niall shifts in his sleep, his wings curling tighter around himself, arms clenching around his tummy and Zayn starts forward. The tree shivers.

“Ni?” He asks, softly.

Silence.

Which, when Zayn thinks about it, is weird.

It’s not usually this quiet in the arboretum. Niall and Harry both talk to the plants as they grow, make sure they talk back. Whispers tend to follow up and down the rows like snippets of wind.

He tips the holo into a wall port for safe keeping and wanders around the backside of the room, avoiding the prickly pablis in the middle. Honestly, poke them one time on a dare and they get so offended. Long memoried horrible fruits.

Louis had laughed so hard, though.

Niall shifts again as Zayn draws up to him. The colors of his wings have gone a too-solid russet and Zayn’s shoulders tense.

“Shit.”

He nudges his way under the branches of the tree and gentles its upset rustling with a hand to its bark. He sends a bit of warmth into it with the regulating mod in his palm and it backs off so he can reach out to Niall’s leg gently.

All of his wing sets are locked up now, wrapped too tight.

“Niall,” Zayn says, firmly.

He makes a small sound.

“Ni,” Zayn rubs his thumb along the smoothness of Niall’s jumpsuit.

Niall mutters something in a language Zayn doesn’t recognize, brow twisted. There’s a whisper among the trees behind him.

Zayn breathes out for a long moment.

They’ve talked about it. About how to pull Niall back when he goes just one dimension too far into things. He knows it’s okay.

He charges up his fingertips with a spark from the grid of the ship, the floor bleeding colorless around them for a second before going back to a muted blue.

He bites at his lip. Niall mutters something else.

It’s just that deep seeded fear. That pulled-up-short feeling that Zayn shouldn’t turn his electrified fingertips to someone who doesn’t need a defib. Far too many years of medical studies and xeno-anatomy studies and Niall studies later, and it still worries him.

Zayn hovers his hand over Niall’s primary dorsal for a moment. His muscles and bones are just so delicate, like creation had gone halfsies with the humanoid aspect of him, the same thrumming in-between ness of his wings somehow present in his body too. When they were trainees, it was all Zayn could do to not carry him everywhere.

“Get a grip,” he orders himself and reaches out his hand.

The jolt burns.

Niall gasps and launches upright, nearly hitting Zayn in the head.

“Fuck!”

Zayn leans a hand back to keep his balance, “Ni, you okay?”

“Fuck,” he says again, shuddering.

Zayn clicks on his iris-analyzer with a blink, watching Niall’s data colligate instantly, fine-tuned to all of them like Zayn’s struggled for.

Heart rate. Alpha waves. Dimensionality. Fine fine fine. His wings have even gone back to almost normal, just a few fine trembles of sharpness.

He’s okay.

“Can I touch you?” he asks, because he still wants to feel that okayness, make sure for his own hands.

Niall finally looks at him, something in his eyes seeming to draw back inside his head. “Oh shit. Zayn.”

Zayn chuckles a bit. “Yeah.”

“Sorry,” Niall flushes.

“No, it’s okay, babes.” Zayn opens his arms to Niall and he crawls in readily, letting the plex smooth back slowly. Zayn tugs him into his lap and adjusts them against the humming tree, mindful of the sensitivity of Niall’s wings after being that solid. “You were just – in deep.”

Niall curls himself into Zayn’s shoulder, eyes tickling closed against his skin.

“I was –“ Niall says, then trails off and kisses the bend of Zayn’s elbow softly. “I was.”

“Where’d you go?”

 _What did you see? What’s it like to be here and there and_ more _?_

“Just, around-like.”

Zayn rubs his chin against Niall’s hair, feeling the way it catches in his stubble a bit.

“Okay.”

It’s not his job to push. Phasing through dimensions isn’t complicated for Niall really, and it’s not even really dangerous. He has a firm grasp on himself. And anyway, Zayn thinks ruefully, it’s more healing than anything him or his tech can do sometimes.

Zayn hums a little quietly with the tree. It has a nice low sound, like earth brushed over.

He can see why this has fast become Niall’s cozy spot.

That and Zayn knows that Niall’s not averse to being cuddled awake in the spotted green and warm starbursts of a ship arboretum. He always giggles sleepily when one of them nibbles on his neck or brushes their hand along his arm. Louis complains about it in the link like a gooey mess of emotions, every few rotations.

Zayn smiles against Niall’s hair.

Quietly, against Zayn’s collar, Niall makes a sound and trails his hand down Zayn’s arm to lace their fingers.

Zayn frowns, “Ni?”

Niall sniffles a bit.

 _Teary_ , Zayn thinks, carefully tucking it away from the link. It’s not necessarily bad, but.

Zayn checks his breathing with a hand smoothed down the off balance tilt of his back. It’s shallow and strained. Biting his tongue, Zayn rubs slow circles along the different muscle groups, fighting not to shiver as his hand brushes through Niall’s wings.

Niall’s breathing kicks up for a minute and then eases back down slowly.

Finally, he whispers, “I just want it back, Z.”

It.

 _It_.

The ship. Their link. The feeling of wholeness, of _not_ drifting, lineless through the unfriendliness of a system with no bodies.

Niall’s always had more trouble being unattached.

“I know, baby, I know,” Zayn says back, tucks his nose to Niall’s head.

“It’s so quiet, it –“ Niall shudders.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, alright,” Zayn kisses Niall’s temple and feels his lips tingle with the energy Niall’s putting out as nerves, “Liam and Louis know what they’re doing.”

Niall tightens his grip and doesn’t say anything.

Sighing a bit, Zayn twists his hand mods a bit to adjust for the pressure of Niall’s hand. Even he only belatedly remembers sometimes, Niall is deceptively stronger than human.

He wishes he had more to say.

The silence has been scary and at times overwhelming – Zayn wandering into Louis’ room to pounce on his stomach and make a scream break the air, or playing Earth tracks loud enough that Harry comes sauntering in, all curls and smiles at the edges. But, it’s also been good for Zayn, good for his head in some ways.

Distance helps him feel closer to himself.

He can’t say that though.

It’s lucky the link is sluggish through them all right now, lucky he’s been able to cover his relief this well from the rest of them. Regret isn’t on his mind, but he is glad they’re getting a chance to breathe before jumping back into something like they always do.

He rubs his thumb along the side of Niall’s.

Gathering a bit of the remaining volts in his fingers, he taps them along Niall’s skin lightly.

Niall laughs, surprised.

“Zayyyyyn,” he draws out.

“Niiiiiiall.”

Niall giggles more and sends back his own energy in a series of flickers to Zayn’s wrist.

Zayn gasps.

“Haha,” Niall smirks.

“Shush.”

Chest twinging, Zayn bites at Niall’s ear as he squirms and giggles a bit.

 _See_ , Zayn thinks, _there_. Distraction. Noise.

It’s not like Zayn thinks they’re better off without the ship, but he does think they’re enough, in and of themselves. The ship, even one as sweet as this one, is just a bonus.

But Niall isn’t him, doesn’t think that way really.

Doesn’t think like any of them.

Niall’s wings are humming now, turning the arm around them hard to move through, sticky like invisible sap laid over the oxygen molecules. Zayn moves his hand discretely down to Niall’s hip, covers it with a light tickle.

Laughing, Niall twists away and reaches easily to a tree branch to pull himself up. The tree whispers happily, branch steady as a hand for Niall’s weight. Zayn shakes his head and pushes up from the floor grid like a regular, boring human.

They wind their way back to the entryway, Niall’s wings and hands reaching out absently to the tree branches. They shuffle after him like little children, eager leaves curling around the warm and care. It makes the room sway with small waves of living music.

Zayn grins, shakes his head a bit.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Zayn hipchecks him gently.

“Mm,” Niall sways back, “Did you come in for something, by the way?”

“Oh, yeah.” The upgrades. “Not a big deal, tho, and I got –“ Zayn laughs at himself.

“Distracted?”

“Yeah, just saw you – like, against,” Zayn gestures to the space outside, the earth inside.

Niall nods, a small smile tucked into the dimple of his cheek.

Zayn makes it halfway out the door behind Niall before he remembers the holo plans.

“Oopsie,” he tugs on the back of Niall’s jumpsuit.

“Hm?”

“Forgot the holo.”

Zayn pulls back and heads back along the wall, towards the storage space.

The upgrades are fun. It’s kinda nice, actually, every other time they’ve done an upgrade round, there’s always a few levels of negotiation, a sharp, tense back and forth with the ship. Ships are self preserving, but that doesn’t always mean being welcome to throwing out old bits of themselves. Right now, with the ship quiet, it’s smoother, less confusion and frustration all around.

“I know you –“ Niall says quietly. Zayn stops and looks back to see Niall paused, one hand on the door panel, “I know this has been okay for you.”

Zayn’s ribs lock.

“Babe,” he pushes out. “I – “

“No, it’s. It’s fine,” Niall says, looking out at the saplings. “It’s you, you know.”

He – he does. He just didn’t know that Niall knew. He thought he’d been covering good.

“I didn’t – “

Niall waves at Zayn’s general area, “Your aura. It’s dipping like, not-purple, it’s,” Niall makes a frustrated sound, “not a color in your cones.”

Zayn laughs, breathless. His chest feels stretched too tight.

Niall rolls his eyes, “Anyway, it’s just. saying you’re dealing with it better, than like, the rest.”

There’s something strange in Niall’s tone.

It’s not like they know absolutely everything about each other. They have secrets. After the settling of the link, they made sure to block off the parts they needed to be separate. Zayn remembers the moments sharp under his tongue, the panic and desperation to just have a singular thought, to be a singular entity, so strong he thought he would choke on it.

They made sure they have secrets.

But it’s not like them to keep things from each other, not things _about each other_.

He swallows, “Do we always – You’ve never said anything about us giving away so much, before.”

The ship wall makes a strange sound as Niall’s hand clenches against it.

There’s a flicker of something sharp and huge at the corner of Niall’s shoulder for one instant before it sucks back into Niall’s spine.

Zayn’s fingers tingle, mods popping on-net; his sensors trying to pick up new feedback, checking the risk of a such a sudden uptake in energy flow.

It makes Zayn gasp.

Niall looks away.

Zayn breathes deep, focuses on turning off the mods, resetting the alert levels.

“That just set my safeties off,” Zayn says, into the too-pressed quiet.

“Sorry,” Niall mumbles, into his jumpsuit.

A low boil begins in the pit of Zayn’s stomach.

“Gonna explain why?”

Niall mumbles something.

“What. Niall.”

The boil feels strange, solid, like a source of magma rock-locked into the base of his spine.

“It’s. It didn’t use to happen, as much, or like I couldn’t see it as much,” Niall stumbles over the words, “Before.”

Zayn watches the grid flex in greyscale around Niall’s hand. It looks about like how Zayn feels. Muted, gripped too hard in familiar fingers.

“And now?” His voice sounds distant.

Niall’s hand eases away from the grid.

When he looks over at Zayn, half-steps towards him like gravity gone sideways, the magma in Zayn’s stomach bubbles quietly.

“Now,” Niall says, “it’s like all my stuff is – rejuvenating, too excited, too online in all my connections.”

Niall, their angel, their nuclear core, their contained super-xeno in a thinly skinned human body of his own choice.

And the rest of them, the same past, the same place, the same link but -

“And the rest of us are what, going offline?”

They’ve all been feeling like they’re doing good. Feeling like he could watch the trees and the seeds of stars around them with something like empathy. Disappointment sits hollow inside his bones.

“No, I wouldn’t – that’s not what I would say.” Niall shakes his head so hard, a lock of his hair swings into the door frame..

“What _would_ you say, Niall?”

It occurs to Zayn that if Niall is coming online, and even if they aren’t going offline, if there’s an opposition of energy, it could be a – could be more of a transfer than a happenstance of metaphysiology. Suspicion burns like acid down his throat.

“Zayn,” Niall says, firm.

He looks up to find Niall’s hands gripping themselves hard, standing closer now, just before Zayn, but not close enough for energy to flowp between them.

“What?” His voice is rough.

“I would never, ever, ever.”

Zayn breathes out, too harsh. It’s loud in the room, the trees hiding in their barks.

“I would never,” Niall repeats, whispering.

And Zayn knows that, it’s just.

All so different and thinly patched over. He feels like he needs a few more hours under a regen lamp.

“Okay,” Zayn says.

Niall’s eyes flicker across Zayn’s chest as he nods.

 _Wait_.

“How did you know what I was asking?”

Niall’s jaw goes hard and Zayn’s hackles rise.

He opens his mouth, but Niall cuts him off. “Zayn, I love you, but sometimes.” Niall breathes out hard through his nose. Zayn’s palms ache to check on his lung performance. “Sometimes you are such. A. Zodiacal. Cloud.”

He looks so frustratingly fond, Zayn’s lips twitch. His shoulders ease a bit.

“I’m dust?”

“Yeah,” Niall bites back, “Check the link next time, you florescent dustbit.”

And _oh_. That makes a lot of sense.

Zayn was probably pulsing the thought, felt it strongly enough in his body it was a compulsion in the link.

His cheeks warm. “Do uhm. Was it loud?”

“I don’t know if they heard it, if that’s what you mean.” Niall crosses his arms and then curls in a bit, says quieter, “It’s all a bit dim and sluggish right now.”

Yeah, it is.

A delicate balance of Zayn being able to maneuver around the molasses of it and then forgetting and having it spill over his feet, stick him to the grids.

“If you don’t want,” Niall shivers so hard it vibrates through the link, “if you don’t want the link to -

“No, no, Ni, I want to.” Zayn trips forward to cup Niall’s cheeks in his hands, ignores the twinge of his analyzers activating.

Niall’s eyes flutter, his head tilting into Zayn’s hands and he can’t resist leaning forward to nose at his temple, the delicate, not-human skin that feels so familiar but still so brilliantly different.

“If you’re sure,” Niall says, lips brushing Zayn’s wrist.

His pulse beats against his tendons, trying to reach out for Niall. Zayn curls closer.

He’s like a yo-yo. Back and forth, back and forth. It feels like he’s got no balance lately. But there is, there is this, there is them. And each of them are so, so steady for him. They hold still and let him check them over, quieting their voices but not lowering their boldness.

“I love you,” Zayn says.

Niall’s eyes close.

“I’m still trying,” Zayn says, into the soft spun platinum of Niall’s hair, “I think I’m still trying to deal with –“ _the crash_. “The effects of.”

“Everything.” Niall wraps a finger around some of the bottom of Zayn’s shirt.

“Yeah.” Zayn tucks his face further into Niall’s neck, breathes in ozone.

 _It’s okay_ , Niall nudges at him with his hands, his end of the link. Zayn swallows.

“We all are, Zayn.”

“Yeah,” he just thought – he thought maybe that they were all getting better. He’s been feeling so good. “’ust thought. Yunno.”

Niall waits.

Breathing in, Zayn lets his emotions tip towards Niall’s point in the link.

“Ah,” Niall rubs at his hip, “Don’t think it works quite like that, azimuth.”

Zayn smiles a tiny bit.

“When’d you get so wise?”

“Listened to the medic, didn’t I?”

Zayn sighs out, let the tension in his body be regulated by Niall’s energy flow, by his own mods; lets himself sink into himself. He holds onto Niall.

“Think we got a ways to go?” Zayn asks, curious, but also to hear Niall’s voice against his chest.

“Think it’s probably not really a hardline finish kinda thing. ‘Member what you said about –“

Niall’s hand curls against Zayn’s skin.

Niall’s knee. The sheared bone and muscle and tendon and Zayn’s hands trying to hold together something torn apart in the worst way possible, to the worst person possible. The horror. Then the pleading. Then the struggling. Niall struggling against himself, struggling against them, struggling against the struggle.

Zayn there the whole time, holding what he could, worrying about what he couldn’t. Focused on Niall and the rest of them.

Zayn doesn’t remember if he ever got himself checked out, he realizes.

Something uncoils in him.

“Healing happens at its own pace,” Zayn says, again, thinking back to the med-bay on Fiy. “Gotta let yourself sit before you can walk.”

“You’re the medic,” Niall says, again, only this time it’s soft, it’s accompanied by a mild push in the dulled link.

It’s a sad excuse of the stretch Niall’s nudges in the link usually are.

He misses it.

He _does_ miss the brightness of it, the resounding vibration of it in his heart and the bottom of his head. Sometimes, it felt like walking around with a pillow against the world. Maybe that was his distance, normally. Maybe that was what he used to buffer against things. Not an absence, but a presence.

The best offense is a good defense, Louis would say.

“I do miss it,” Zayn whispers, because he wants Niall to know.

He shouldn’t think Zayn doesn’t want this as much as them, doesn’t love them more than he knows what to do with, from the supple magnetic bottoms of his boots to the twisted top of his lime hair, all through every rotation, every breath.

“I miss you,” Niall says.

And that’s really it, isn’t it.

Zayn presses his lips to the soft patch of skin in front of his ear for one long, hard moment and then pulls away.

“It’ll come back.” Their ship will be back. Liam and Louis have never concocted something for them that didn’t work out, even if it’s 3 revolutions down the flight.

“You’ll too,” Niall nudges at the bottom of his jaw. “However you do.”

And yeah, that’s true too.

It’s hard to remember is all, to parse out the knowledge from something like habit and toolong internalized fact and bring it back to the forefront of him, of them. It’s hard to remember that they had to find their interlocking rings, in the beginning.

They weren’t brought together with perfect balance.

And now, lately, here they’ve been at another ring, a different level than they’ve gotten used to. But it doesn’t mean they can’t relearn a new steadiness.

Zayn smiles, small, into Niall’s softness.

Even if it’s different, even if it’s a while, Zayn’s got them. Zayn’s got his home floating through the Pegasus galaxy, one slow mission at a time, one small movement from sitting at a time. And if he doesn’t – if he doesn’t get to walking, then maybe that’s okay too.

There’s more to healing a broken bone than miles you can put under it.

Zayn plays his thoughts along the squishy edges of the link, the vast, strangeness of the unresponsivity.

He has no idea, beyond physiological feedback, how the rest of them are doing.

“You think,” Zayn asks quietly, “we could all do with a bit of a cuddle?”

Niall’s eyes flutter shut in the corner of Zayn’s vision.

“Please,” his voice cracks. “ _Please_.”

“Okay,” Zayn kisses him gently.

They linger for a moment, Niall soft and clinging and Zayn rough and slipping.

Kissing Niall is a bit like an adventure. He always finds a way to discover something new, a way to make Zayn feel like he’s watching binary stars settle, bold and lingering, beneath the curve of a planet.

Zayn bites down on Niall’s bottom lip against the urge to swallow him whole.

Niall breathes out and Zayn can feel it brushing against his skin, like the most intimate of whispers. Niall breathing hard from Zayn’s kisses, wrapping his arms around Zayn’s neck and shoulders with a spine warming sprinkle of energy, clutching them closer.

He clutches back, doesn’t let go or stop running his tongue over the delicate softness of Niall’s lips until he pulls back flushed and giggling breathlessly.

Zayn cups his cheeks to kiss his laughter, smiles so hard it’s more like pressing his teeth to Niall’s skin.

He doesn’t seem to mind.

“Wanna go get ‘em?”

“Yeah,” Zayn closes his eyes, “yeah, please.”

Niall takes his hand and leads him out of the arboretum. The fragileness of his fingers feels okay against Niall’s slight bones, like they can be small together.

Maybe that’s the point, Zayn thinks, as they both turn towards the engine room without speaking, following the soft pinging from Liam’s end of the link.

Maybe the point is this, them, holding hands and peeking around the entryway to see Liam curled in the tank with the ship in his lap, talking quietly, desperately to it - Liam looking up with a twist to his mouth and a tremble to his shoulders and Zayn reaching out a hand for him. It’s them running into Louis in the hallway to the cockpit, the link barely a ripple before him, shallow enough he can tuck the low lemon of his limbs into the tangle of them before they’ve noticed.

The point is he’s waited long enough for things to _go back_ to something that’s fractured in the void of a long passed nebula. He’s waited for things to fix themselves.

But that’s not going to happen.

He’s almost through waiting.

He waits just a little more, waits until he curls up under Louis’ chin, leg tucking over Liam’s as Niall finishes lighting Harry’s candles. He’s using his own energy as a spark and it’s something like a quiet firework in Zayn’s heart. Soon, Harry will be in from setting on the autopilot and they will rest and push their worn edges together in a way that they haven’t for a long time and then - then Zayn will breathe out and let himself be small and crumbly. He will stop waiting.

He will let them hold his hands and his sore aching muscles.

He’ll let them help him heal.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> infinity times infinity's main tag [here.](http://wepush.tumblr.com/tagged/infinity%20times%20infinity) thanks for reading <3


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